Surveying recreational users and developmental synaesthetes for 28 psychoactive drugs, the study found that serotonergic compounds—especially tryptamines and LSD—most frequently induce synaesthesia (commonly sound–colour), with induction rates clustering by drug class and similar patterns in controls and synaesthetes. The results support a serotonergic contribution to chemically induced synaesthesia, while also indicating individual susceptibility and possible involvement of non-serotonergic pathways.
Objective
Preliminary research suggests that experiences resembling synaesthesia are frequently reported under the influence of a diverse range of chemical substances although the incidence, chemical specificity, and characteristics of these effects are poorly understood.
Methods
Here we surveyed recreational drug users and self-reported developmental synaesthetes regarding their use of 28 psychoactive drugs comprising 12 different drug classes and whether they had experienced synaesthesia under the influence of these substances.
Results
The drug class tryptamines exhibited the highest incidence rates of drug-induced synaesthesia in controls and induction rates of novel forms of synaesthesia in developmental synaesthetes. Induction incidence rates in controls were strongly correlated with the corresponding induction and enhancement rates in developmental synaesthetes. In addition, the use of LSD was the strongest predictor of drug-induced synaesthesia in both controls and developmental synaesthetes. Clear evidence was observed for a clustering of synaesthesia-induction rates as a function of drug class in both groups, denoting non-random incidence rates within drug classes. Sound-colour synaesthesia was the most commonly observed type of induced synaesthesia. Further analyses suggest the presence of synaesthesia-prone individuals, who were more likely to experience drug-induced synaesthesia with multiple drugs.
Conclusions
These data corroborate the hypothesized link between drug-induced synaesthesia and serotoninergic activity, but also suggest the possibility of alternative neurochemical pathways involved in the induction of synaesthesia. They further suggest that the induction and modulation of synaesthesia in controls and developmental synaesthetes share overlapping mechanisms and that certain individuals may be more susceptible to experiencing induced synaesthesia with different drugs.
Papers cited by this study that are also in Blossom
Araújo, A. M., Carvalho, F. M., Carvalho, M. et al. · Archives of Toxicology (2015)
Barrett, F. S., Krimmel, S. R., Griffiths, R. R. et al. · NeuroImage (2020)
Brogaard, B. · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2013)
Griffiths, R. R., Johnson, M. W., Richards, W. A. et al. · Psychopharmacology (2011)
Synaesthesia is a neurodevelopmental condition in which ordinary stimuli (inducers) evoke atypical, involuntary secondary experiences (concurrents), occurring in about 1–4% of the population. Previous work indicates a genetic basis with early environmental shaping of specific inducer-concurrent pairings, and reports exist of adult-onset synaesthesia following stroke, trauma or drug use. A contentious question addressed in the literature is whether synaesthesia-like experiences can be induced in non-synaesthetes; prior studies have shown that cognitive training, suggestion and several classic psychedelics can produce transient synaesthesia-like phenomena, with serotonin (5-HT2A) signalling implicated as a likely neurochemical mechanism. However, most pharmacological work has focused on serotonergic compounds, leaving open whether other neurochemical systems contribute, whether certain individuals are generally prone to chemically induced synaesthesia, and how recreational drugs modulate developmental synaesthesia. Luke and colleagues therefore conducted a broad survey of recreational drug users and self‑reported developmental synaesthetes to characterise the frequency, drug- and class-specificity, and phenomenology of drug-induced synaesthesia. The primary aims were to (1) estimate incidence rates of drug-induced synaesthesia across a larger set of commonly used psychoactive substances, (2) test whether induction clusters by drug class (suggesting neurochemical specificity), (3) describe the types of induced synaesthesia, and (4) examine how drugs affect existing developmental synaesthesias and whether some individuals are particularly prone to induction across drugs. The study used an online questionnaire to gather lifetime drug-use histories and self-reports of synaesthetic experiences under the influence.
The study recruited participants online over six months via English-language drug‑user and synaesthesia forums and social media; the survey was hosted on Qualtrics. Of 1,568 starters, 644 participants completed the survey (41% completion). The completed sample ranged from 18 to 74 years (mean 30.0, SD 12.2) and contained 457 controls (self-reported non-synaesthetes) and 187 self-identified developmental synaesthetes. Recruitment intentionally oversampled synaesthetes to ensure statistical power; all participants provided informed consent under local ethical approvals. Data were collected with a structured survey that recorded demographics, self-reported developmental synaesthesia (including childhood-only cases and family history), lifetime use and frequency of use for 28 psychoactive substances, and whether participants had ever experienced synaesthesia while under the influence of each substance. Synaesthesia was defined for respondents as a blending of senses (for example, shapes having a taste or sounds having a shape). For type specification, respondents could select from a 27×27 matrix of inducer–concurrent combinations. Developmental synaesthetes were additionally asked whether each drug had enhanced or suppressed their extant synaesthesia, and all participants were asked about “flashbacks” of drug-induced synaesthesia. Skip logic reduced irrelevant questions based on prior responses. Analyses were pre-specified to some extent: drugs were grouped into 12 classes, with ‘‘tryptamines’’ denoting classic psychedelics (LSD, DMT, psilocybin/psilocin, ayahuasca). The researchers computed incidence rates, correlations (Pearson) with bootstrap 95% confidence intervals (10,000 samples), and a drug-class incidence dissimilarity index to test within-class clustering using 10,000 random permutations. Four exploratory stepwise logistic regressions predicted binary occurrence of drug-induced synaesthesia from either binary drug-use indicators or frequency of use, performed separately for controls and synaesthetes; Nagelkerke R2 was reported and bootstrap resampling (1,000 samples) assessed internal replicability of retained predictors. Finally, a synaesthesia-proneness (SP) score was computed to quantify an individual's tendency to report induced synaesthesia across drugs, weighting reported frequency by inverse population incidence for each drug. The extracted text does not report some procedural details such as exact inclusion/exclusion criteria beyond self-report, nor does it provide dosing information for individual drug episodes.
Sample and usage patterns: Of the 644 completers, 457 were controls and 187 self-identified as developmental synaesthetes. Controls reported greater use of 19 of the 28 surveyed drugs relative to synaesthetes. Across drugs, use rates did not correlate with induction rates in controls (r = .01, p = .96) or in synaesthetes (r = .09, p = .64), indicating that higher usage did not explain higher induction incidence. Incidence of induced synaesthesia and correlations across groups: Induced synaesthesia was reported for many drugs. Among controls, the highest incidence rates were for LSD (57%), ayahuasca (49%), and psilocybin (45%), with a median incidence across all drugs of 15% (95% CI: 3, 25). Synaesthetes showed numerically higher incidence rates across almost all drugs (median 23% [95% CI: 9, 38]). Incidence rates for induced synaesthesia across the 28 drugs were highly correlated between controls and synaesthetes (r = .79, p < .001). In addition, incidence rates in controls correlated strongly with enhancement rates of developmental synaesthesia in synaesthetes (r = .93, p < .001), and within synaesthetes incidence and enhancement rates were strongly correlated (r = .78, p < .001). Flashbacks of drug-induced synaesthesia were reported by 24% of controls and 43% of synaesthetes (χ2(1) = 22.08, p < .001, phi = .19). Clustering by drug class: Visual inspection suggested that drugs within the same pharmacological classes tended to have similar induction rates. Quantitatively, a within-class incidence dissimilarity index (computed for classes represented by two or more drugs) yielded a mean value of 54% across seven drug classes in controls, indicating members tended to be within 54% of the median incidence for their class. Permutation testing (10,000 permutations) indicated that this clustering had a low probability of arising by chance. Significant within-class clustering was observed overall and specifically for tryptamines and phenethylamines in both groups; clustering for dissociatives was significant in controls only. The extracted text notes that some classes had too few members to allow robust clustering tests. Predictors of induction (logistic regressions): Four exploratory stepwise logistic regression models predicted whether participants had ever experienced drug-induced synaesthesia. In controls, the binary-use model was significant (χ2(6) = 70.48, p < .001) and accounted for roughly 20% of variance; six predictors were retained, with LSD, MDMA (Ecstasy) and methadone retained in ≥75% of bootstrap samples. A frequency-of-use model in controls was also significant (χ2(5) = 48, p < .001) explaining somewhat less variance; methadone and kava kava were retained in ≥70% of bootstrap samples. Across both control models, LSD, Amanita muscaria, methadone and kava kava were retained in the final models, though replication rates varied and methadone showed particularly high replicability. Among synaesthetes, the binary-use model was significant (χ2(5) = 85.7, p < .001) explaining a larger proportion of variance (reported R2 ≈ .60), with psilocybin and GBL retained in ≥70% of bootstrap samples; GBL was a replicable negative predictor. The frequency model was also significant (χ2(5) = 90.2, p < .001) with LSD, cannabis and dextromethorphan (DXM) retained in ≥70% of samples. Across the four analyses, LSD (use and/or frequency) was the only consistent predictor of drug-induced synaesthesia in both groups, though replication rates for LSD predictors were not uniformly high. Methadone (controls) and DXM (synaesthetes) emerged as other notable, relatively replicable predictors. The authors note that predictors other than LSD did not replicate across both groups. Phenomenology: Sound-colour synaesthesia was the most commonly reported type of drug-induced synaesthesia, followed by sound-space and sound-shape. Grapheme-colour synaesthesia—common in developmental cases—was infrequently reported. Chi-squared analyses across the four highest-inducing drug classes (tryptamines, phenethylamines, dissociatives, salvia) showed differences only for sound-colour incidence (χ2(3) = 18.84, p < .001, phi = .18). Subsidiary contrasts indicated higher sound-colour rates for tryptamines versus dissociatives (χ2(1) = 4.33, p = .038) and versus salvia (χ2(1) = 16.04, p < .001), and for phenethylamines versus salvia (χ2(1) = 8.09, p = .004). Overall, induced synaesthesia types did not appear strongly drug-class-specific. Proneness to induction: The synaesthesia-proneness (SP) score distribution was heavily skewed: many participants had never experienced induced synaesthesia (33% of controls, 17% of synaesthetes). Binary induction rates across all drugs were lower in controls (67%) than in synaesthetes (83%), Fisher's exact p < .001, phi = .17. A small subset of participants showed high SP scores, suggesting that some individuals are particularly prone to experiencing synaesthesia across multiple drugs, and such proneness was more common among self-identified developmental synaesthetes. The authors note that SP estimates are confounded by drug exposure (non‑users necessarily score low).
Luke and colleagues interpret their findings as corroborating a prominent role for serotonergic compounds—particularly tryptamine-class psychedelics such as LSD, DMT and psilocybin—in producing synaesthesia-like experiences, but stress that induction is not exclusively serotonergic. The highest induction rates were observed for tryptamines, and logistic models identified LSD use or frequency as the most consistent predictor across analyses, supporting the long-standing hypothesis implicating 5-HT2A receptor activity in drug-induced synaesthesia. At the same time, substantial induction associated with non-serotonergic compounds—most notably Salvia divinorum (a kappa opioid agonist), dissociatives (NMDA antagonists), and cannabis—argues for a more nuanced, multi‑pathway view in which different neurochemical mechanisms may converge on perceptual hyperexcitability or altered network dynamics. The authors further emphasise that drugs which induce synaesthesia in controls tend also to induce novel synaesthesias or enhance existing synaesthesia in developmental synaesthetes, with strong positive correlations between induction rates in controls and both induction and enhancement rates in synaesthetes. This overlap suggests shared neural mechanisms across induced and developmental phenomena, though the authors caution that drug-induced experiences typically lack the inducercurrent consistency and automaticity characteristic of developmental synaesthesia, consistent with a model in which long-term consolidation of inducer–concurrent associations is required for those hallmark features. Several limitations are acknowledged. The online, self-report survey design allowed wide reach but precluded experimental control over dose, context, and objective verification of developmental synaesthesia; developmental status was not validated with standard consistency or automaticity tests. The sample over-represents self-identified synaesthetes by design, so prevalence figures are not representative of the general population. The SP metric is confounded by participants' drug-use exposure. Despite these caveats, the large sample and the non-random clustering of induction rates by drug class are presented as evidence that the observed patterns reflect meaningful pharmacological effects rather than mere reporting noise. For future research, the authors recommend controlled pharmacological trials directly contrasting 5-HT2A agonists with drugs acting on other systems (for example kappa opioid or NMDA mechanisms) to test competing neurochemical models, and neurophysiological comparisons between drug-induced and developmental synaesthesia. They also suggest studying individuals who appear highly prone to chemically induced synaesthesia to clarify predispositional factors, and that contextual variables (such as concurrent music listening) be indexed to determine whether frequent sound-induced reports reflect genuine modality bias or situational confounds.
Synaesthesia is a neurodevelopmental condition that occurs in 1-4% of the populationin which different stimuli (inducers) will reliably and involuntarily elicit atypical secondary experiences (concurrents;; for reviews, see. For instance, the word rain may taste like blueberries, or the letter A may elicit the colour red. Accumulating evidence suggests that synaesthesia has a genetic basis, although individual associations seem to be shaped mostly by environmental constraints in early developmentand remain highly automatic and consistent over time in adulthood. Synaesthesia typically emerges in early stages of development, although there have been multiple reports of adult-onset cases following stroke, drug use, physical trauma, and neuropathology. A point of controversy is whether synaesthesia can be induced in non-synaesthetes. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that the behavioural and phenomenological characteristics of synaesthesia can be temporarily triggered through cognitive training, verbal suggestion, and drugs (for a review, see. Drug-induced synaesthesia is of particular interest, as it can broaden our knowledge about the neurochemical basis of synaesthesia. Research indicates that synaesthesia can be temporarily experienced by non-synaesthetes through consumption of classic psychedelics such as the partial serotonin receptor agonist lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD;. It has been proposed that excessive levels of serotonin, or serotonin agonists and partial agonists activating 5-HT2A receptors, in cortical neurons is a common mechanism shared by (at least some cases of) developmental, acquired and drug-induced synaesthesia. In particular, excessive levels of serotonin may trigger synaesthesia through a selective enhancement of cortical excitability in visual cortex, which is a feature of developmental synaesthesiaand observed in trained synaesthesia, although not in at least one case of acquired synaesthesia. A recent double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of LSD confirmed that LSD produces perceptual effects resembling synaesthesia, although the induced associations did not display consistency. This suggests that inducer-concurrent consolidation over time is required for the manifestation of this defining feature of developmental synaesthesia. Despite the consistent implication of the serotonin system in drug-induced synaesthesia, there exist multiple outstanding questions regarding the neurochemical specificity of these effects. In particular, nearly all studies of drug-induced synaesthesia to date have been restricted to drugs targeting the serotonin system, and thus it remains unknown whether other neurochemicals play a role in drug-induced synaesthesia. In addition, some individuals may be prone to synaesthesia irrespective of the drug class; the prevalence of such synaesthesia-prone individuals is unknown. Finally, aside from anecdotal reports, it remains poorly understood how different drugs modulate developmental synaesthesia, whether they induce novel forms of synaesthesia and whether these effects occur through similar neurochemical mechanisms to drug-induced synaesthesia in controls. The present study sought to better understand the frequency, specificity, and characteristics of drug-induced synaesthesia. In particular, we were interested in determining the frequency of drug-induced synaesthesia, clarifying whether induced synaesthesia is more common in particular drugs or drug classes, as suggested by previous research, and the types of synaesthesia experienced under the influence of chemical substances. In addition, we explored how the consumption of chemical substances impacted developmental synaesthetes. Toward these ends, we surveyed recreational drug users and self-reported developmental synaesthetes regarding the frequency of their consumption of typical recreational drugs and the extent to which these substances elicited synaesthetic experiences.
1568 participants were recruited through various channels (see Procedure) and started the survey and 644 completed it (41%). In the completed sample, age ranged from 18 to 74 (MAge=30.0, SD=12.2). Given the paucity of research on this topic, a formal statistical power analysis was not undertaken. The pre-specified sample size was set at a minimum of 300 nonsynaesthetes and 100 synaesthetes to ensure sufficient power to detect weak effects. Data collection continued past these minimum sample sizes until a particular point in the academic year had been reached. Data were not inspected or analyzed until after data collection had ceased in order to prevent optional stopping. Country of residence was listed as United States (53%), United Kingdom (17%), Canada (5%), Australia (3%), Germany (3%), Netherlands (2%), Sweden (2%), Norway (1%), with the remaining participants coming from 37 countries (all less than 1%; with 1% unreported). In the completed sample, 457 individuals reported not having synaesthesia and were identified as controlsand 187 self-identified as synaesthetes. The proportion of the latter group is larger than that observed in the general populationbecause this group was explicitly targeted to ensure sufficient statistical power and thus this proportion should not be considered representative of the corresponding prevalence of synaesthesia in the general population. All participants provided informed consent in accordance with local ethical approval.
A survey was used to gather demographic information and assess different features of druginduced synaesthesia in controls and synaesthetes. The survey included items pertaining to demographic information (age, gender, education, country of residence) and developmental synaesthesia (whether they had synaesthesia, whether they had synaesthesia only during childhood, and whether any of their family members had synaesthesia). The survey next assessed the use (and frequency of use) of 28 typical psychoactive substances and whether they had experienced synaesthesia (and how frequently) whilst under the influence of those substances. Synaesthesia was defined as an "experience in which there is a blending of the senses, such as shapes having a particular taste, sounds having a particular shape, or numbers having a particular colour". The survey included the option to specify synaesthesia types using a dual drill down list of 27 × 27 (729) possible inducer-concurrent combinations. Control participants were asked if they had ever experienced synaesthesia in the absence of drugs and were given a chance to specify the context. In addition to the questions on drug-induced synaesthesia, for each consumed drug, developmental synaesthetes were queried as to whether the drug had enhanced or suppressed their developmental synaesthesia. Finally, all participants were asked if they had ever had "flashbacks" of drug-induced synaesthesia (reexperiencing of a drug-induced synaesthetic experience). The survey utilized skip logic enabling participants to only respond to items relevant to their experience.
Developmental synaesthetes and recreational drug users were recruited through online advertisements for a study about drug use that made no reference to a hypothesized association between drug use and synaesthesia. Potential participants were targeted in English language online drug user or synaesthesia forums and websites (Erowid.org; UK Synaesthesia Association) and social media platforms (Facebook) over a 6-month period. The survey was hosted by Qualtrics (Qualtrics, Provo, UT) and took approximately 10 to 60 minutes to complete depending on one's drug use history.
All data are publicly available here:. All analyses were two-tailed and were performed in. In the analysis of induced synaesthesia types, three different reported types of induced synaesthesia that appeared to be highly unlikely based on the synaesthesia literature, or an error, were excluded from the analyses. Otherwise, no data transformations were performed. Pearson correlations were computed along with bootstrap 95% confidence intervals (bias-corrected and accelerated method; 10,000 samples;. Drug-induced synaesthesia enhancement rates among developmental synaesthetes were calculated by subtracting self-reported suppression rates from enhancement rates for the entire sample for each drug. For various analyses, drugs were clustered into 12 classes. For the purposes of this paper the class of drugs considered to be classic psychedelicsconsisted only of tryptamine-type drugs acting as 5HT-2A receptor agonists or partial agonists (LSD, N,N-dimethyltryptamine [DMT], psilocybin/psilocin and ayahuasca, which contains DMT), hereafter referred to as tryptamines (for a similar classification, see. Clustering of drug classes was assessed by computing a drug class incidence dissimilarity index. This measure was computed by dividing the absolute difference between the incidence rate of each member in each class and the median incidence rate by the median incidence rate, thereby providing a percentage difference from the median rate for the respective class, with smaller values reflecting greater similarity of incidence rates. We then computed the median incidence dissimilarity measure for all classes. To evaluate the statistical significance of dissimilarity measures, we randomly permuted the data 10,000 times and computed the corresponding pvalue of the observed dissimilarity index in the permutation distribution. The strongest predictors of drug-induced synaesthesia were computed using four exploratory stepwise logistic regression analyses with the (binary) experience of drug-induced synaesthesia as the outcome variable. The analyses included either binary drug use or frequency of drug use for the 28 drugs in controls and developmental synaesthetes separately. For each analysis, we report Nagelkerke R 2 as an estimate of the approximate percentage of variance in the outcome explained by the retained predictors. In order to assess the internal replicability of these exploratory effects, we used Bootstrap resampling (1,000 samples) and we report the proportion of samples for which significant predictors were retained in the model (e.g.,. In order to estimate participants' propensity for experiencing druginduced synaesthesia, we computed a synaesthesia-proneness (SP) score: where n is the number of drugs taken by an individual; fs is the self-reported frequency of induced synaesthesia on a drug d; ir is the incidence rate of synaesthesia on a drug (in the total sample; i.e., the relative proportion of participants reporting induced synaesthesia for that drug; and d is an arbitrary drug (of the set of 28). As can be seen, for each drug, frequency of induced synaesthesia for the drug is adjusted according to the inverse of the incidence rate based on the assumption that synaesthesia-prone individuals are those who will experience synaesthesia with a range of drugs and not only those with high induction incidence rates. This adjusted frequency is then averaged for all drugs that a participant has taken. We compared controls and developmental synaesthetes on SP scores and binary synaesthesia-induction (across all drugs) using t-tests and Fisher's exact tests, respectively. Controls self-reported greater use of 19 of 28 drugs relative to synaesthetes although the relative discrepancies between incidence rates tended to be minor (Figure). Controls and synaesthetes reported experiencing synaesthesia under the influence of a wide range of drugs. Most notable were the high incidence of synaesthesia among controls under the influence of LSD (57%), ayahuasca (49%), and psilocybin (45%), with a median incidence rate across all drugs of 15% [95% CI: 3, 25] in controls. In contrast, 0% of controls reported having experienced synaesthesia in other (non-drug) contexts. The incidence rates of induced synaesthesia for the 28 drugs did not significantly correlate with the corresponding incidence rate of usage, r=.01, p=.96 [95% CI: -0.37, 0.43]. Synaesthetes had numerically higher incidence rates across all drugs (Med: 23% [9, 38]) except 2C-B and Amanita muscaria. Induction of novel synaesthesias outside of the context of drug use was similarly rare: 2% reported experiencing synaesthesia whilst meditating. As in the controls, the incidence rates for induced synaesthesia and the rates of usage for the 28 drugs did not significantly correlate, r=.09, p=.64 [95% CI: -0.30, 0.51]. Notably, incidence rates for drug-induced synaesthesia across drugs were highly correlated across the two groups, r=.79, p<.001 (Figure). Similarly, incidence rates in controls correlated with enhancement rates of extant developmental synaesthesias in synaesthetes, r=.93, p<.001. Finally, among synaesthetes, incidence rates of induced synaesthesia were strongly correlated with enhancement rates, r=.78, p<.001 [95% CI: .51, .91]. Among controls, 24% reported having flashbacks of drug-induced synaesthesia whereas 43% of synaesthetes reported such experiences, χ2(1)=22.08, p<.001, phi=.19. Cumulatively, these results suggest that induced synaesthesia varies considerably across drugs and that the same drugs that seem to induce synaesthesia in controls also appear to induce novel synaesthesias and enhance extant synaesthesias in developmental synaesthetes.
Incidence of drug use and drug-induced synaesthesia. Left: Incidence rates (%) for use of different drugs in controls (C) and synaesthetes (S). Middle: Incidence rates (%) for induced synaesthesia in the two groups as a function of drug and drug class. Drugs labelled in red denote higher incidence rates for controls than synaesthetes. Right: Incidence rates of induced synaesthesia across drugs among controls correlate with incidence rates (circles) and enhancement rates (squares) across drugs among synaesthetes. Rates in the 0-10% range (grey region) are re-presented in the inset on the right.
A striking feature of the incidence rates of induced synaesthesia in Figureis that drugs from the same classes appear to be characterized by similar induction report rates, suggesting intraclass clustering. For example, the four tryptamines surveyed were among the top 6 drugs for incidence rates of the 28 drugs in controls and comprised the top 4 in synaesthetes. Similar clustering was apparent with phenethylamines, dissociatives, opioids, and stimulants. To examine if this apparent clustering deviates from chance, we computed within-class dissimilarity indices for the incidence rates in the 7 drug classes that were represented with 2 or more different drugs, thus excluding salvia (Salvia divinorum), cannabis, ether, Valium (diazepam), and alcohol (see Methods). The mean value across the 7 drug classes among controls was 54%, which indicates that members of a drug class tended to be within 54% of the median incidence rate within the respective class. As can be seen in Figure, the incidence dissimilarity index value across drug classes among controls, 54% [95% CI: 33, 98], had a low probability of occurrence in the
Our next set of analyses sought to examine whether drug-induced synaesthesia can be predicted on the basis of drug use (Table). Toward this end, we conducted four binary logistic regression analyses in which the outcome variable was drug-induced synaesthesia, treated as a binary variable collapsed across all drug classes. Separately for controls and synaesthetes, we performed two analyses including either binary drug use or frequency of drug use for each of the 28 drugs as predictors of the binary chemical induction of synaesthesia (having experienced drug-induced synaesthesia at least once or not). The first analysis with the predictor set of binary drug use in controls was significant, χ 2 (6)=70.48, p<.001, accounting for approximately 20% of the variance. The model retained 6 significant predictors in the final step, each representing a distinct drug class. The mean of this distribution was R 2 =.26] with three of the predictors (LSD, Ecstasy, and methadone) retained in 75% or more of the Bootstrap samples. The model including frequency of drug use was also significant, χ 2 (5)=48, p<.001, accounting for slightly less variance, R 2 =.14. The final model retained five predictors, mean R 2 =.21 [95% CI: .12, .31], with two (methadone and kava kava (Piper methysticum) retained in 70% or more of the analyses. Notably, four predictors (LSD, Amanita muscaria, methadone, and kava kava) were retained in the final model for both analyses. Among synaesthetes, the model for binary drug use was significant, χ 2 (5)=85.7, p<.001, accounting for a substantially larger proportion of the variance, R 2 =.60. The final model retained four significant predictors, mean R 2 =.79 [95% CI: .57, .98], with two (psilocybin and GBL) retained in 70% or more of the analyses. Notably, GBL (gamma-Butyrolactone) use was a replicable negative predictor of drug-induced synaesthesia. Finally, for the model including frequency of drug use as predictors was significant, χ 2 (5)=90.2, p<.001, accounting for a similar amount of variance, R 2 =.60. The final model retained four significant predictors, mean R 2 =.80 [95% CI: .63, 1.00], with three (LSD, cannabis and DXM) retained in 70% or more of the analyses. Interestingly, only two predictors (LSD and DXM) were replicable across both analyses in synaesthetes. Binary use and frequency of use for LSD were the only consistent predictors of drug-induced synaesthesia across the four analyses although these variables did not reliably exhibit strong replication rates. Other potentially notable patterns include the findings that Amanita, methadone and kava kava were replicable predictors across both analyses in controls. However, only methadone exhibited high replication rates in both models. By contrast, DXM (dextromethorphan) was a replicable predictor in both analyses among synaesthetes with relatively high rates of replicability. It is particularly noteworthy that other than LSD, no drugs were replicable predictors across synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes in any of the analyses. Cumulatively, these results suggest that drug use can be used to reliably predict drug-induced synaesthetic experiences, with the most robust predictor across groups being LSD and other predictors including methadone in controls and DXM in synaesthetes.
Sound-colour, sound-space, and sound-shape were the three most commonly-reported forms of drug-induced synaesthesia. A notable result was the report of grapheme-colour synaesthesia, which is among the most widely studied forms of developmental synaesthesia but has not been widely reported in drug-induced synaesthesia. We examined whether particular synaesthesia subtypes varied across drug classes. The cell counts for multiple drug classes were too low to allow for log-linear analyses, so we performed a series of chi-squared analyses contrasting the incidence of the 13 most common subtypes of synaesthesia across four different drug classes (Fig). The drug classes were found to differ only in the incidence of sound-colour synaesthesia, χ 2 (3)=18.84, p<.001, phi=.18. Subsidiary analyses revealed that tryptamines had a higher incidence rate than dissociatives, χ 2 (1)=4.33, p=.038, phi=.10, and salvia, χ 2 (1)=16.04, p<.001, phi=.19, and phenethylamines had a higher incidence rate than salvia, χ 2 (1)=8.09, p=.004, phi=.24, with all other effects being non-significant, χ 2 s(1)<2.7, ps>.10, phi<.15. These results suggest firstly that sound-colour synaesthesia is the most common form of drug-induced synaesthesia, thereby corroborating previous results, and secondly, that the incidence of sound-colour synaesthesia scales with the differential induction rates across different drug classes. However, the results further suggest that types of induced synaesthesia do not seem to be specific to drug class.
It is apparent that there is considerable variability in the incidence of drug-induced synaesthesia. In order to estimate the prevalence of highly prone individuals, we calculated synaesthesiaproneness (SP) scores, which quantify an individual's tendency to experience drug-induced synaesthesia, taking into consideration the individual's drug use, whether they experienced synaesthesia for each drug, and the induction incidence for each drug in the sample (see Analysis section). We had aimed to evaluate whether synaesthesia proneness among controls would be higher in those self-reporting as having had childhood synaesthesia or family members with synaesthesia; however, the incidence of these two subgroups was very low, 5 cases [1%] and 8 cases [2%], respectively, and thus these data were not analysed further. As can be seen in Figure, synaesthesia proneness (SP) was heavily skewed in both controls and synaesthetes due to the relatively large proportions of the samples that had not experienced induced synaesthesia, 33% and 17%, respectively. Controls displayed lower binary induction rates (67%) than synaesthetes (83%), Fisher's exact p<.001, phi=.17and 11 synaesthetes (5%), which may reflect the relative proportions of individuals in these groups that are highly prone to induced synaesthesia.
Here we identified the incidence and characteristics of drug-induced synaesthesia in controls and the modulation of self-reported developmental synaesthesia across a range of recreational drugs. We corroborated the previously reported result that synaesthesia is commonly
experienced following the consumption of classic psychedelics (e.g., LSD), although multiple other drug classes were characterized by high incidence rates of induced synaesthesia (>20%) including phenethylamines, salvia, and dissociatives. Notably, we found clear evidence for within-drug class clustering of incidence rates; this strongly suggests that differential incidence rates across drug classes are non-random and thus attributable to differential neurochemical profiles. As in previous research, sound-colour synaesthesia was the most common type of drug-induced synaesthesia. Our results also suggest that certain individuals are more susceptible to druginduced synaesthesia than others. These results have implications for current understanding of induced synaesthesia, as well as the neurochemical bases of this condition and the neurochemistry underlying multisensory integration.
Nearly all previous studies of drug-induced synaesthesia were restricted to LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, ayahuasca, or MDMA. Since all of these drugs act as (partial) serotonin receptor agonists, a persistent hypothesis in the literature is that they induce synesthesia-like experiences through activation of 5HT2A/2C serotonin receptors. Nevertheless, the non-serotonergic psychedelic substance Salvia divinorum (and its derivative savinorum A) was previously found to also induce synaesthesia; for a review, see. The present results corroborate both of these patterns. Members of the drug class of tryptamines, which act primarily as (partial) 5HT-2A receptor agonists, were reliably characterized by the highest incidence rates. In addition, psychedelic phenethylamines, which also act primarily as (partial) serotonin receptor agonists, had the third highest incidence rates (see below as well). However, similar to previous findings; for a review, see, Salvia divinorum and dissociatives (e.g. ketamine), which do not seem to primarily act on serotonin receptors, were also characterized by high incidence rates. Rather, salvia divinorum, having the active molecule salvinorin A, seems to act only on kappa opioid receptors, stimulating them to inhibit the release of striatal dopamine, whereas dissociatives primarily act as NMDA receptor (uncompetitive) antagonists, but may have downstream effects convergent with 5-HT2a receptor agonists, such as increased glutamate release and neural excitation, leading to subjective experiences somewhat similar to classic psychedelics. Interestingly, we also found a high incidence rate for cannabis -which is known to only act on cannabinoid receptors -especially for developmental synaesthetes. Taken together, these findings suggest a more nuanced view than the simple attribution of spontaneous drug-induced synaesthesia to (partial) serotonin receptor agonists and seem to indicate that these induced experiences are not exclusively serotonergic. A notable feature of the present results is that the same drug classes that were reported to elicit synaesthesia in controls also seem to be reliably associated with the induction of novel forms of synaesthesia and the modulation of existing forms in self-reported developmental synaesthetes. For example, tryptamines, phenethylamines, salvia, and dissociatives were characterized by high incidence rates for novel types of synaesthesia in controls and developmental synaesthetes, as well as the enhancement of existing synaesthesias in the latter group. Moreover, drugs that do not seem to reliably induce synaesthesia in non-synaesthetes, such as stimulants and opiates, also had little impact on the experience or modulation of synaesthesia in developmental synaesthetes. Overall, there were strong positive correlations between incidence rates of induced synaesthesia in controls and incidence and enhancement rates of synaesthesia in developmental synaesthetes. To our knowledge, there has not been any systematic research on the impact of recreational drugs on developmental synaesthesia although the present findings are consistent with previous reports of the enhancement of developmental synaesthesia with LSD, mescaline, and amyl nitrate, and its weak enhancement or inhibition with alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and amphetamines) (for a review, see. These results therefore suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying druginduced synaesthesia may share some similarities in controls and developmental synaesthetes. Although drug-induced synaesthesia was reported for an array of different drug classes, there seemed to be a clear pattern of induction rates within and across drug classes. In particular, we observed a within-drug class clustering of incidence rates: for both controls and synaesthetes independently, incidence rates tended to be very similar within drug classes. Significant within-drug class clustering was observed across drug classes but also within the classes of tryptamines and phenethylamines for both groups whereas for dissociatives, the clustering was only significant in controls. For the remainder of the drugs, within-class clustering was non-significant, although due to the small number of drugs in each class, these nonsignificant results likely reflect Type II errors and should be interpreted cautiously. Taken together, these results suggest that the similarity of incidence rates within drug classes are nonrandom. This seems to indicate that different drug classes produce synaesthesia through different systems and thereby further implicate different neurochemical pathways in the induction of spontaneous synaesthesia. A further notable finding of the present results is that we were able to reliably and significantly predict the experience of drug-induced synaesthesia on the basis of participants' drug use patterns. Drug use, measured dichotomously or by self-reported frequency, for the 28 drugs was able to account for a substantial amount of the variance in drug-induced synaesthesia. Although multiple drugs were retained in the exploratory regression analyses, LSD was the only replicable predictor across all four analyses in controls and synaesthetes. These results corroborate previous research highlighting LSD to be highly effective in inducing synaesthesiaand our observation that LSD is characterized by the highest incidence rates of drug-induced synaesthesia. Notably, this effect seems to be unrelated to the actual use rates of these different drugs, as drug use rates were not reliably correlated with induced synaesthesia rates. The greater predictive utility of drug use in synaesthetes is plausibly attributable to the overall higher induced synaesthesia incidence rates but this is unlikely to represent a significant confound as other drugs with high induction incidence rates were not reliable predictors (e.g., psilocybin). Although we highlighted the neurochemical heterogeneity of induced synaesthesia above, these findings suggest that serotonin seems to be the neurochemical most reliably implicated in drug-induced synaesthesia. Nevertheless, it should be noted that other drugs, such as methadone and kava kava in controls and DXM in synaesthetes, were replicable predictors, indicating their potential as important synaesthesia predictors that are worthy of further attention. A related pattern across the analyses seems to indirectly corroborate our clustering results. Within each of our regression analyses, the models only retained two predictors from a single drug class once in controls (kava kava and GBH) and once in synaesthetes (LSD and psilocybin) and in both cases, one of the predictors was not retained in the other regression analysis. This corroborates our foregoing supposition that different episodes of drug-induced synaesthesia seem to occur through multiple, at least partially independent, neurochemical pathways. A subset of survey respondents reported synaesthesia under the influence of different drug classes, which suggests that some individuals may exhibit proneness to synaesthesia irrespective of the drug being consumed. We quantified synaesthesia-proneness by weighting frequency of induced synaesthesia according to the inverse of incidence rates of induced synaesthesia for each drug, considering the total number of drugs an individual has consumed. The distributions of these scores in controls and synaesthetes suggest skewed distributions with most individuals displaying low synaesthesia-proneness with a correspondingly low incidence rate of high synaesthesia-proneness. Despite these interesting results, a limitation of this approach is that our indices of synaesthesia proneness and induction are confounded by drug use: synaesthesia-prone individuals who are not drug users will necessarily score low on this measure. Nevertheless, our findings suggest that there are individuals who are more likely to experience synaesthesia in response to various recreational drugs, and that this proneness is elevated among those self-identifying as developmental synaesthetes. The characteristics and mechanisms of synaesthesia-proneness warrant further attention in future research in this domain.
Previous research on drug-induced synaesthesia using MDMA, ketamine and psilocybinfound that these drugs primarily induce experiences of auditory-visual synaesthesias (with sounds as inducers)and a review of this literature similarly found that auditory-visual synaesthesias were the most common. By contrast, the subjective experience of sound-colour synaesthesia was not found to be more common than grapheme-colour synaesthesia in a controlled trial of LSD. We evaluated these effects by studying the types of induced synaesthesia among the four most potent synaesthesia-inducing drug classes (tryptamines, phenethylamines, dissociatives and salvia). We again found that sound-colour synaesthesia was the most common form of drug-induced synaesthesia, followed by other sound-inducer synaesthesias such as sound-shape and sound-space synaesthesia. As in previous research, grapheme-colour synaesthesia, among the most prevalent and most well-studied forms of this condition, was rarely encountered in this study although it has been reported in previous cases of drug-induced synaesthesia. We did not observe any clear differences in the types of induced synaesthesia across different drug classes, which potentially suggests that the neurochemical mechanisms of drug-induced synaesthesia are not modality-specific. Collectively, these data corroborate the previously observed finding that auditory stimuli seem to be the most frequent inducers in cases of spontaneous drug-induced synaesthesia. This pattern is potentially confounded by the fact that users of recreational drugs are probably more likely to listen to music whilst consuming drugs, thereby artificially enhancing the incidence of sound-induced synaesthesia (but see. Accordingly, it is imperative that future research index contextual factors and concurrent activities during induced synaesthesia.
To date, there are two proposed neurochemical mechanisms for synaesthesia. The first, most commonly referenced hypothesis, is that synaesthesia occurs as a result of serotonin cascades. Given the wealth of studies implicating 5-HT2A serotonin receptors in induced synaesthesia, they have been proposed as the 'synaesthesia receptors'. Further preliminary supporting evidence comes from studies suggesting that 5-HT2A receptor inhibition may block the experience of synaesthesia. Additionally, findings from human brain imaging studies with LSD indicate that reductions in default mode network integrity driving functional hyperconnectivity between the parahippocampal cortex and visual cortexand the claustrum and auditory cortex) may underpin some of the classic psychedelic sensory phenomena such as synaesthesia. Expanding upon this idea,proposed that excessive levels of serotonin or serotonin receptor agonists activating 5-HT2A receptors in cortical neurons is a mechanism shared by (at least some cases of) congenital, acquired or drug-induced synaesthesia. According to this account, excessive serotonin release triggers selective hyperexcitability in visual cortices leading to aberrant perceptual states. This is consistent with visual cortex hyperexcitability in developmental synaesthesiaand in trained synaesthesia(see also. Elsewhere, we have argued that these effects are alone unlikely to produce the hallmark behavioural features of developmental synaesthesia (e.g., automaticity and inducerconcurrent consistency). Rather, we maintain that these features arise from a consolidation process in which inducer-concurrent associations are driven by statistical regularities in one's environment, resulting in the consolidation of inducer-concurrent associations over time. This perhaps helps to explain why induced synaesthesias do not seem to meet conventional synaesthesia criteria for automaticity and consistency) whereas, at least in one case, acquired synaesthesia does. A second (disinhibition) hypothesis proposes instead that attenuated GABA (γ-aminobutyric acid) results in disruption of inhibitory activity, which in turn gives rise to synaesthesia. According to this account, disinhibited feedback from higher cortical areas -proposed to be responsible for synaesthesia -are associated with lower GABA levels in brain regions specific to the type of synaesthesia. The aforementioned results regarding selective cortical hyperexcitability in developmental synaesthesiaand trained synaesthesiaare consistent with this account, as are other dataalthough this hypothesis has received less attention than a serotonin hypothesis in the context of drug-induced synaesthesia. Moreover, the simplistic notion of lower GABA levels corresponding to cortical inhibition is not consistent with current insights into the complexity of the role of GABA in both cortical inhibition and excitation). The present results provide novel data that has bearing on these models. As described above, our results corroborate previous research implicating serotonin in drug-induced synaesthesias and our data clearly point to the likely involvement of serotonin in induced synaesthesia. Classic psychedelics are also known to modulate dopamine, although their primary subjective psychological effects are serotonergic, and dopamine is unlikely to play a key role in inducing synaesthesia as drugs known to modulate dopamine levels (e.g., cocaine) were characterized by low incidence rates of induced synaesthesia. Nevertheless, a challenge to a simple serotonergic hypothesis is presented by Salvia divinorum, which exhibited the fourth highest incidence rate in our study and yet is not known to target serotonin receptors, but rather exclusively kappa opioid receptors. Moreover, to our knowledge, there is no clear evidence for aberrant serotonin receptor activity in developmental synaesthesia (e.g.,. By contrast, our results do not support GABAergic disinhibition models of synaesthesia as GABA agonists (e.g., nitrous oxide, GHB, and muscimol in Amanita muscaria) were reliably associated with reports of induced synaesthesia in both controls and developmental synaesthetes (see also, albeit to a lesser extent than with tryptamines, phenythylamines, Salvia, and other dissociatives. These results are at odds with a simple GABAergic model of induced synaesthesia, according to which GABA agonists would be expected to suppress synaesthesia in developmental synaesthetes. By contrast, GABA antagonists would be expected to facilitate the induction of synaesthesia in non-synaesthetes. Disinhibition models of synaesthesia have not yet precisely specified the GABAergic mechanisms of developmental or induced synaesthesia and require further elucidation. However, our results are superficially inconsistent with this model, as is previous research using magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which demonstrated that developmental synaesthesia was not characterized by atypical GABA concentrations in primary visual cortex. Taken together, our results are broadly congruent with a serotonergic hypothesis but suggest also multiple potential neurochemical mechanisms (e.g., kappa opioid receptors) by which recreational drugs can trigger spontaneous synaesthesia.
A potential limitation of this study is the online recruitment of our samples and administration of the survey. This allowed us to collect data from a large, diverse sample that otherwise would have been challenging to recruit in a traditional laboratory-based study but did not permit control over the manner in which the data were collected. Insofar as our results are broadly commensurate with the extant literature it seems that online administration is unlikely to have produced systematic biases or errors. This aligns with research indicating that online surveys typically yield results similar to those conducted in laboratory contexts. Our observation of non-random clustering of the incidence rates across drug classes further attests to meaningful patterns across participants, which, along with the large sample sizes, mitigates concerns regarding reporting accuracy, and variations occurring with dosage. A further limitation of this study is that we based our determination of developmental synaesthesia, as well as the lack thereof, on self-report. This diverges from the extant synaesthesia literature, in which identification of this condition typically includes measures of inducer-concurrent automaticity and/or consistency. These procedures were not incorporated into our study as they were not yet available for online implementation when this study was conducted. Self-reported assessment of synaesthesia has been used in the past for validating these measuresbut may have inflated the incidence of false positive reports of synaesthesiaand developmental synaesthetes incorrectly selfreporting as controls. However, synaesthetes were recruited from established channels where individuals are unlikely to be confused regarding their status as a synaesthete (as opposed to an unselected sample). In addition, our finding that the incidence of self-reported familial synaesthetes (2%) falls within the prevalence range of this condition (1-4%;, suggests that the false negative rate is unlikely to be high. These limitations warrant the use of caution in interpreting the present results, but are unlikely to have confounded the incidence rates of drug-induced synaesthesia and the clustering of rates by drug class, which were similar in the two groups.
The present study expands upon previous research on drug-induced synaesthesia by studying a wider array of drugs than previous studies. Our results corroborate multiple findings in the extant literature but also raise new questions that warrant further attention. Future controlled pharmacological research on drug-induced synaesthesia should directly contrast drugs that act on 5-HT2A serotonin receptors against those that modulate other neurochemicals. In particular, it will be imperative to formally test predictions derived from serotonergic and GABAergic models of synaesthesia (e.g.,. It will also be necessary to compare the neurophysiological characteristics of such effects against those observed with developmental synaesthesia. Such trials are also required to more clearly elucidate whether the frequent observation of sounds as inducers of spontaneous synaesthesiarepresents a genuine feature of induced synaesthesia or a contextual artefact. Our results suggest that a small subset of individuals may be especially prone to induced synaesthesia across different drug classes. Further study of these individuals has the potential to significantly advance our understanding of the conditions under which induced synaesthesia occurs. There has been almost no research on the impact of recreational drugs on developmental synaesthesia but we believe further research on this topic has the potential to inform our understanding of the neurochemical pathways underlying this condition.
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